


Last Words

by foxghost



Series: City of Chains [5]
Category: Dragon Age
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-15
Updated: 2012-09-15
Packaged: 2017-11-14 08:00:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/513057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxghost/pseuds/foxghost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of snapshots because of this <a href="http://frikadeller.tumblr.com/post/31516860222/because-foxghost-just-released-the-reference-sheet">lovely portrait</a> of Markus Hawke.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Last Words

**Author's Note:**

  * For [frikadeller](https://archiveofourown.org/users/frikadeller/gifts).



His father had always been stern, their silent protector, words saved for occasions when his eyes did not convey enough of his anger or his love.  
  
Leandra smiled when she took the dishes off the table, and Malcolm touched her hand briefly. Five pairs of eyes in the room, and no one could tell which of the gestures preceded the other. Little signs of affection, little clues, a hand on his back when he raised his sword just right, a hint of a smile as Bethany conjured her first flame.  
  
In the end he spoke not at all; a glance at the twins and a last wrinkling of his brows, his gaze finally falling on his eldest son. The living and the dead gathered, the past and the future of Hawkes, a red coat he had not known yet that he would wear so soon, blood on his hands, lyrium tingling on his skin.  
  
Hawke never found out if that last look was an accusation or a plea, but he preferred the latter.  
  
 _Watch over them._  
  
 _Take them home._  
  
*  
  
Drawing what he thought was his dying breath he saw a dragon, and the spawn scattering, the stench of blighted blood thinning. His fingers twitched, reaching for this sword, but his side ached and this chest was a mess of searing pain.  
  
“Don’t move,” Bethany’s hand in his, the gauntlet ripped to shreds by his last, desperate act: trying to pull off an ogre’s horns with his hands, having lost his sword.  
  
“I killed it, brother. The ogre’s dead,” and Carver sounded proud as anything so Markus smiled, beneath the blood and his broken jaw.  
  
He wanted to say, _you only got to kill it because I punched both its eyes out._ He was glad he didn’t get to take the wind out of Carver’s sails, later. It wasn’t as though they hadn’t enough days left for snide words and bickering.  
  
When the witch healed his jaw and remarked that anyone else would have died when an agre smashed him against the ground twice, he replied, “I need a smoke.”  
  
She lifted an eyebrow at him, and then, at the dying templar. She knew.  
  
*  
  
Aveline eyed him with more disapproval than her templar had, or the witch of the wilds, when he handed Bethany his cigarette.  
  
“Yes, I’m a terrible older brother,” Hawke said, watching the templar recruits gossiping in their little circle not twenty feet away. “But I say a smoking habit’s the least of her problems if we stay here any longer.”  
  
Carver leaned against a pillar, idly tapping his foot against a brass plaque, and Hawke was glad to see that he was scanning the other half of the gallows.  
  
“So do we go with the mercenaries or the smugglers?” Carver asked, despite how much he hated taking orders, he deferrred to his brother.  
  
Hawke waited until Aveline stepped out of earshot, preditably chased away by their bad habits. Only then did he mouth the word to Carver, settling into his shark smile.  
  
 _Both._  
  
*  
  
There was plenty of money and far too much for him to know what to do with, even with his side projects and the charities and the bribes, pouches of refined lyrium keeping templars reasonably happy enough to leave the twins alone.  
  
But at the end of the day’s visit Beth had told him that they were going _home_. To the gallows.  
  
Markus wasn’t sure how he felt about that.  
  
He stood on his balcony, watching his siblings as they walked through the safety of high town, made safer by their guards. And when they were gone, disappearing under an archway covered in vines, he remained, cigarette hanging out of his mouth, his red housecoat not nearly enough to shield him from the cold but he never minded it.  
  
Snow reminded him of Ferelden.  
  
But he couldn’t call that home, either.  
  
*  
  
Another sleepless night, another evening with a tumbler of whiskey in hand waiting for the cellar door to open.  
  
One of these days he would be able to convince Anders to let him come along. Not last night though. And definitely not this morning. Anders would chide him for this, sitting by the fire in the middle of the night, early morning, instead of sleeping, but he coudln’t sleep anyhow.  
  
Only two tumblers full, and he barely felt the alcohol; he tried reading once, while waiting, but his eyes kept slipping from the words. Easier to stare into the fire and let his mind go blank than to stare at lines on a page as his headache knocked and knocked at the back of his skull.  
  
He heard the door open, heard it snap shut again, quiet footsteps on a thick rug. Chin on his shoulder, hands on his chest, a kiss pressed to the side of his forehead.  
  
For a moment Markus did not scowl or smile or look annoyed - faces he showed to the world, to family, to friends, to himself. Anders was none of these things, and more.  
  
A glance, an accuasation, a plea - each year brought more meaning to his father’s last words that were not, changed in their tone as he changed and grew into his mantle and beyond it until it no longer fit; a red coat he was made to wear far too young.  
  
He placed his hand over Anders’ briefly, and felt the twitch of Anders’ lips against his forehead as he smiled, stubble prickling over his hairline, where his hair had turned grey.  
  
And instead of pulling away like a man who had children watching, he held on, drawing Anders down for a kiss.  
  
He was not an eloquent man. Not a poet, new at love and clumsy at building phrases, or at least he had always thought so. Anders would watch Markus’ lips pantomime his thoughts, throwing out one phrase after another, deeming them too much, too sappy, too out of character.  
  
Then in the end all the words that came out were always simple, no matter how long he mulled them over.  
  
“Welcome home.”


End file.
